[AG-TECH] Multicast service model

[Bill Nickless]

Thank you, Lucy, for forwarding the multicast service model draft on to the 
mboned working group.  I intended to do it but simply hadn't gotten around 
to it yet.

I've gotten a couple of questions from people asking about the 
draft.  Having thought about it for a couple of days, I think the draft is 
not written as clearly as it could be.

It should be split into two separate drafts:

  - Description of the Multicast Service Model
  - Survey of implementations of the Multicast Service Model

In general, I think we would be better off with some separation between 
the  service model discussion and the engineering necessary to support that 
model.  The irony is that I was trying to do that in the draft in question, 
but managed to fall back into the trap myself.

Why?  Because many-to-many applications like Access Grid want the service 
model, and one-to-many applications like Internet broadcast do too.  It's 
less clear to me that an IGMP-based implementation of that service model is 
necessarily the best or only way.

Watch This Space for a rewritten version of the Multicast Service Model 
draft along with a companion Multicast Service Implementation Survey draft.

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Bill Nickless    http://www.mcs.anl.gov/people/nickless      +1 630 252 7390
PGP:0E 0F 16 80 C5 B1 69 52 E1 44 1A A5 0E 1B 74 F7     nickless at mcs.anl.gov